The Coast Guard Makes a Heroic Sled Dog Rescue

A Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter rescue crew was on a routine training flight near Seward, Alaska, last week when they got a call from the state troopers that a small helicopter had gone down in the nearby mountains. It took the Coast Guard crew just 10 minutes to reach the crash site and spot the destroyed aircraft—a Robinson R-44—rolled on its side at 3,600 feet in a small depression along a ridgeline.

There was blowing snow and flat light, with not much more than a quarter-mile of visibility as the Coasties pulled into a hover, using the downed chopper itself as their only point of reference. "We're used to operating at sea level," says aircraft commander Craig Neubecker, who was flying the Jayhawk. "Normally we try to hover as low as possible, which takes less power and less time." But given the near-whiteout conditions, Neubecker and his crew were forced to establish a high hover a full 80 feet over the glacier as 26-year-old rescue swimmer Erich Klingner was lowered out the door on the aircraft's hoist line.

Klingner hit the glacier, sunk knee-deep into the snow, and began trudging up to the downed aircraft. "I didn't realize until I jumped over the tail that there were a whole mess-load of dogs behind the helicopter," Klingner says. The crashed copter was owned by Pollux Aviation, an Alaskan business that shuttles tourists up to the Godwin Glacier for dog-sled rides at $520 a head. There were no tourists on the flight, just the pilot and a professional sled dog musher—plus seven startled huskies.

Klingner, who is trained as an EMT, assessed the two men. Neither was seriously injured. He decided the pilot would be the first to be loaded into the Jayhawk's rescue basket, a cage-like mesh metal box that is rated to hold up to 600 pounds. Flight mechanic Alex Degado lowered the empty basket down to Klingner, who situated the pilot inside and signaled for Delgado to raise the compartment. When the empty basket hit the glacier for a second time, Klingner loaded in the musher—along with three of his sled dogs.

"The dogs did not want to get into the basket," Klingner recalls. "As we got into the rotor wash, they tried to pull away. They started pooping and peeing all over the place. I had to just grab them by the back of the neck and pull them in."

"It was insane," flight mech Delgado says. "Just going into whiteout conditions kind of got all our hearts going. Our first thought was, I hope nobody's dead. We didn't even notice the dogs until we got pretty close." After getting the first few animals into the helicopter, Delgado lowered the musher back down for a second load of huskies while the rescued pilot tried to calm the dogs already inside the Jayhawk.

"I used my rescue basket as a makeshift baby fence between every hoist," says Delgado, who at one point had to lunge out the aircraft door to rescue a 50-pound black husky that leaped out of the basket as it neared the aircraft door.

After three hoists, with two men and five rambunctious dogs inside the aircraft, Delgado sent the basket down for Klingner and the final two huskies. "We don't train for something like this," Klingner says. "The whole rescue was off the cuff. In [rescue swimmer] A School, every day was about dealing with a panicked survivor. A panicked survivor listens to you after about the third time you tell them what to do. With dogs, it's not that easy."

Kalee Thompson is a contributing editor at Popular Mechanics. Her book Deadliest Sea, about the Coast Guard rescue of the crew of the fishing trawler Alaska Ranger, will be published on June 1. For more on this and other heroic Coast Guard rescues, go to DeadliestSea.com.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io

This commenting section is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page. You may be able to find more information on their web site.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Popular Mechanics participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.